Welcome to my little diatribe about the grand world
of racing. My desire is to provide my fellow racing fanatics and
patrons of the speed sports, some of my personal fun and entertaining
insights, and views into this crazy and sometimes confounding sport. I
hope that you have fun with these short stories. Whether you completely
agree with me, which I am sure you will (Nice Dream), or you wish to
challenge me on these beliefs, I look forward to your feedback, comments
and challenges.
The Tale of Directional Confusion
So
how many of you remember the original IMSA-Camel GT, as founded by John
Bishop, the original CART with Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi and other
real racing teams, Formula 1 events that were competitive among multiple
teams, the great TransAm series, and even the forlorn and oft forgotten
CanAm series? Remember these good old days of racing when speed and
winning were all about spending huge sums of money and having loads and
loads of fun. The crowds at the events were unbelievable, and as
general sport racing was taking off like a rocket. Then some key, very
vocal team owners started to scream about run-away cost, mind you this
was a very small group, but very loud. Of course right at this time
CART was trying to become a public company, TransAm began losing some of
their younger stars, IMSA ownership changed and the folks at NASCAR
finally woke up to the fact that they had a tremendous entertainment
vehicle. Then the ultimate level of confusion occurred with the
foundation of the IRL to compete against CART, the creation of the
American LeMans Series and GrandAm to compete against the what was the
foundation of IMSA, TransAm & CanAm, NHRA and the IHRA competed
weekend after weekend against one another to only see the IHRA become a
secondary player and NHRA loose a huge market and sponsor share to
NASCAR, and Formula 1 couldn’t figure out where they wanted to race, Las
Vegas, Dallas, Detroit, finally landing at Indianapolis. Frankly,
racing as an sports and entertainment event became so confusing that
both fans and sponsors ran to other sports and NASCAR as nesting place
of salvation and stability.
Holy
*@%?, what was going on? It all comes down to a struggle for power,
equality and money. Sounds like an old episode of Dallas and the Ewing
family, but where was JR. The reality is that the team owners were
demanding more of the pie and control over CART – thank you to the
public offering - OOPS, TransAm/IMSA were being taken over by the
manufacturers which left the independent teams hung out to dry and
uncompetitive, CanAm couldn’t figure out how to attract sponsorship or
fans, and with the introduction of new racing organizations and
sanctioning bodies, the fans and frankly sponsor had no idea where to
turn. Harvard would have had a field-day writing a case study about
this odd business call motorsports.
You’d think with
all these really smart owners and managers in the sport, one or two of
them would have stood up and said wait a minute something is just not
quite right with the state of affairs in “Denmark”, sorry for the odd
reference, but couldn’t one of these really “intelligent” individuals
figure out that this finite market can only handle so many direct
competitors. Ultimately, the racing business has suffered, except for
NASCAR which separated itself from the pack and became a true household
name. CART and the IRL competed for the better part of a decade, losing
fans, sponsors and market share to other sports all together and
finally bankrupting a tremendous name in CART. ALMS and GrandAm have
competed for the same market forever and continue to confuse and anger
fans because the cars and drivers can’t compete in the major endurance
events against one another. TransAm & CanAm are gone. Formula 1
hasn’t raced in the United States in years (crossing my fingers for both
Austin & New Jersey). NHRA appears to have won out over IHRA,
but they still compete for the same drivers and sponsors, so that
neither one truly financially wins. Finally the Great American Race –
The Indianapolis 500 has been surpassed by it’s little brother The
Brickyard 500. Don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of NASCAR, as well, I
just don’t understand how you can allow the biggest single day money
making racing/sports event to become so diluted and weak, that a race
that is only a quarter of its age beats it in viewership and sponsorship
ratings by a 3 to 1 margin.
We
need to find our path back to the great days of the 1980’s and 1990’s
of racing, when events were full and fans were growing by 30 – 40% per
year. In my next discussion, I will, feebly, begin to offer my opinion
on what I believe the racing organizations need to introduce to bring
back fans, sponsors and the fun of racing. Look around the world, you
will still see that racing is either the number 1 or 2 sports draw per
event per country regardless of the time of year or competing sport.
It’s time we make a concerted effort to raise the game of motorsports
back to the level the sport enjoyed in the past. We need to bring the
fun and enjoyment back to motorsports and get the fans re-engaged with
the teams, sponsors and the sport itself.
I would like
to hear everyone’s thoughts on the changes that should be made to
various organizations and governing bodies, so that we can see our
favorite sport rise from the proverbial ashes. I also promise that
these opinions will be significantly shorter and more to the point.
S. Vettel
